The Peel Web

I am happy that you are using
this web site and hope that you found it useful. Unfortunately, the cost of
making this material freely available is increasing, so if you have
found the site useful and would like to contribute towards its continuation,
I would greatly appreciate it. Click the button to go to Paypal and make a
donation.

The Irish Famine: 1845-9

The 'Great Hunger' was one of many
famines in Ireland during the first half of
the nineteenth century, but the size of the disaster dwarfed those that preceded
it. A contemporary comment was that "God sent the blight, but the English
made the famine": and to some extent this was true because the governments
of both Peel and Lord
John Russell did little to help the Irish population.

A Connemara cottage

Much of the rural population in Ireland lived in abject poverty. In England
and Wales in 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act
had been passed in an attempt to reduce the poor rates. The legislation also
was supposed to prevent idleness among the working classes: this was at a time
when unemployment was rising and the number of jobs available was falling rapidly.
In 1838, despite strong advice to the contrary, Lord
Melbourne's government decided to implement the English Poor Law as the
Irish Poor Law Act. It was - to say the least - inappropriate for Ireland.

Since the end of the Eighteenth Century a large proportion of the rural population
of Ireland had come to depend on the potato as its staple food because this
crop produced more food per acre than wheat and could also be sold as a source
of income. Because of the widespread practise of conacre,
the peasants needed to produce the biggest crop possible.

The second half of the eighteenth century was the high point for the potato,
with several varieties under cultivation. The one of greatest merit was the
'Irish apple', which was valued for its keeping quality and its highly flavoured
mealy flesh. By the early nineteenth century, to additional varieties, the
'sup' and the 'lumper' were gaining. A clear hierarchy in quality and preference
held, with the Irish apple considered the most superior, followed by the cup
and the lumper. By virtue of its high quality, the Irish apple commanded the
best market price; and as the population continued to grow to record levels
(from 6.8 million in 1821 to 7.8 million in 1831) the poor and labouring classes
concentrated increasingly on the cultivation of the cup and the lumper. (Regina
Sexton, in The Encyclopaedia of Ireland, ed. Brian Lalor, Gill &
Macmillan, 2003, p. 889)

Unfortunately, this particular strain was highly susceptive to the fungus,
Phytophthora infestans, commonly known as blight, which had spread
from North America to Europe.

In 1816, when Peel was Chief Secretary for Ireland, the first major failure
of the potato crop had occurred. In 1817 the situation deteriorated into a near-famine
which was accompanied by an outbreak of typhus. Between 1822 and 1826 there
were further food shortages in Ireland. When the 'blight' - which already was
affecting large parts of Europe - appeared in Britain in 1846, Ireland was more
likely to suffer than the rest of the country. The Irish population
had exploded in the first half of the nineteenth century, reaching about 8.5
million by 1845 without any accompanying economic improvement. Furthermore,
the fungus which caused blight was unknown to the scientists of the day so no
remedy was possible.

The blight destroyed the potato crop of 1845 and by the early autumn of that
year it was clear that famine was imminent in Ireland: one of the places worst
hit was Skibbereen in Co. Cork. Peel's government
was slow to react. Peel said that the Irish had a
habit of exaggerating reports of distress.
Since he had been Chief Secretary for Ireland between 1812 and 1818, his experience
might have told him that there might have had some truth in his comment, but
in 1816 he had produced a contingency plan for the government in case economic
disaster ever struck Ireland. Consequently his lack of action is difficult to
explain. In 1843 the Devonshire Committee had been set up
to inquire into the law and practice of land occupation in Ireland and its Report
was published in February 1845. In 1847 a digest
of its conclusions and evidence were published.

During the winter of 1845-1846 Peel's government spent £100,000 on American
maize which was sold to the destitute. The Irish called the maize 'Peel's brimstone'
- and the nickname was only partly because of the yellow colour of the maize.
Eventually the government also initiated relief schemes such as canal-building
and road building to provide employment. The workers were paid at the end of
the week and often men had died of starvation before their wages arrived. Even
worse, many of the schemes were of little use: men filled in valleys and flattened
hills just so the government could justify the cash payments. The Irish crisis
was used as an excuse by Peel in order for him to the repeal the Corn
Laws in 1846, but their removal brought Ireland little benefit. The major
problem was not that there was no food in Ireland - there was plenty of wheat,
meat and dairy produce, much of which was being exported
to England - but that the Irish peasants had no money with which to buy the
food. The repeal of the Corn Laws had no effect on Ireland because however cheap
grain was, without money the Irish peasants could not buy it. No government
at Westminster was prepared to give food to the starving, on the grounds that
the Irish already were lazy and free food would merely encourage this trait.

Peel was replaced in office in June 1846 by Lord John Russell and a Whig
administration dedicated to a laissez-faire
policy. Russell's administration believed that Irish wealth should relieve Irish
poverty, and rejected the policy of direct state intervention or aid. However,
neither Irish landlords nor the Poor Law unions
could deal with the burden of a huge starving population. Despite the harsh
conditions in the workhouses, people in Ireland fought to get into them - unlike
in England, where people dreaded entering 'the House'.

In January 1847 Russell's administration modified its non-interventionist policy
and made money available on loan for relief, and soup kitchens were established.
The potato crop did not fail in 1847, but the yield was low. Then, as hundreds
of thousands of starving people poured into the towns and cities for relief,
epidemics of typhoid fever, cholera, and
dysentery broke out, and claimed more lives than starvation itself.

In September 1847 Russell's government ended what little relief it had made
available and demanded that the Poor Law rate be collected before any further
money be made available by the Treasury. The collection of these rates in a
period of considerable hardship was accompanied by widespread unrest and violence.
Some 16,000 extra troops were sent to Ireland and troubled parts of the country
were put under martial law. The potato crop failed once more in 1848, and this
was accompanied by Asiatic cholera

The 1841 census recorded an Irish population of 8.2 million. By
1851 this figure had been reduced to 6.5 million. These statistics give
some indication of the scale of the disaster but since many of those affected
by the famine lived in remote and inaccessible places, it is more than possible
that far more people died that has ever been thought. It has been estimated
that at least one million people died from starvation and its attendant diseases,
with the remainder seeking emigration to Britain and North America.

The Irish Museum is a site that contains
a plethora of information on Irish history and particularly the history of Waterford.

These materials may be freely used for
non-commercial purposes in accordance with applicable statutory allowances
and distribution to students. Re-publication in any
form is subject to written permission.